Nathan Trentham – “Missing Wife” (London, UK, 1987)
Nathan Trentham, a sharp-eyed former Met detective who had spent the late 1970s chasing IRA cells and bent coppers during the Troubles-era crackdowns, now ran a small private investigation firm out of a smoky office above a curry house in Soho. The Thatcher years had hardened him—grey temples, a permanent five-o’clock shadow, and a distrust of anyone in a suit who smiled too much. He still carried his old service revolver and a hip flask of single malt.
One rainy October evening, Eleanor Hargrove walked in. Wife of a mid-level civil servant at the Home Office, she claimed her husband Richard had vanished three days earlier after a “work dinner.” No note, no suitcase missing, car still in the garage of their semi-detached in Chiswick. The police had written it off as a man “finding himself.”
Nathan didn’t buy it. He started with the usual: phone records from the red box on the corner, a chat with the local publican, and a discreet look at Richard’s desk at the office. What he found was a second life—Richard had been siphoning small sums from a classified European Community funding pot and spending it on a woman named Sylvie in a dodgy flat in Brixton. But Sylvie hadn’t seen him either.
The trail led to a lock-up in East London. Inside, Nathan found Richard—very dead, shot once in the back of the head, execution style. The missing wife? Eleanor had known about the mistress all along. She’d hired Nathan not to find her husband, but to establish an alibi while she and her brother (a mid-level gangster with ties to the Krays’ remnants) cleaned up the loose end. The “Missing Wife” was never missing—she was the architect.
In the end, Nathan handed the evidence to an old contact at Scotland Yard. Eleanor was arrested trying to board a ferry at Dover. As the handcuffs clicked, she gave Nathan a cold smile: “You always were too good at your job, Mr Trentham.”
